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There will be no attempt to give [comics] serious consideration on aesthetic grounds, because they are simply not worth it. -- Margaret Dalziel, 'Comics in New Zealand,' Landfall, March 1955.

The graphic novel format is a great way to tell a story within a computer game; and it's possible to do this without astronomical production values. First-rate CGI cinematics are outside the reach of smaller studios; and even in-engine cinematics require artists, programmers, and voice actors to do right. Given budgetary constraints, their talents are often needed elsewhere, (else you'll get a pretty game with no gameplay). And while you can more cheaply tell a story through a screen full of text, few gamers want to read a novella between a game's levels. The graphic novel strikes a great balance between the two extremes -- done right, it can be both visually powerful and expressive in narrative.

Recently and notably, it's been used in Freedom Force and Max Payne. It may be that these games have legitimized the graphic novel's use, or that the public will simply consider future titles that go this route as being derivative. I'm banking on the former, as it would allow independents to do more with less (so to speak). Our upcoming game will tell its story this way -- a trio of photo shoots and an artist slaving over a mouse make the costs very reasonable. (Here's an example of the result, written earlier today.)

Without the graphic novel, we simply wouldn't have the resources to tell a story that players would want to hear. With it, we have a shot at telling them a story they'll enjoy.
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Random Trivia: The voice actress who played Mona Sax in Max Payne 2 also did the voiceover work for Jane Lane in MTV's Daria.

There will be no attempt to give [comics] serious consideration on aesthetic grounds, because they are simply not worth it. -- Margaret Dalziel, 'Comics in New Zealand,' Landfall, March 1955.

The graphic novel format is a great way to tell a story within a computer game; and it's possible to do this without astronomical production values. First-rate CGI cinematics are outside the reach of smaller studios; and even in-engine cinematics require artists, programmers, and voice actors to do right. Given budgetary constraints, their talents are often needed elsewhere, (else you'll get a pretty game with no gameplay). And while you can more cheaply tell a story through a screen full of text, few gamers want to read a novella between a game's levels. The graphic novel strikes a great balance between the two extremes -- done right, it can be both visually powerful and expressive in narrative.

Recently and notably, it's been used in Freedom Force and Max Payne. It may be that these games have legitimized the graphic novel's use, or that the public will simply consider future titles that go this route as being derivative. I'm banking on the former, as it would allow independents to do more with less (so to speak). Our upcoming game will tell its story this way -- a trio of photo shoots and an artist slaving over a mouse make the costs very reasonable. (Here's an example of the result, written earlier today.)

Without the graphic novel, we simply wouldn't have the resources to tell a story that players would want to hear. With it, we have a shot at telling them a story they'll enjoy.
__________________________
Random Trivia: The voice actress who played Mona Sax in Max Payne 2 also did the voiceover work for Jane Lane in MTV's Daria.

Syndicate was one of my favorite games, and I often dreamed of Bullfrog making a first person shooter based on the Syndicate world. I don't see how this game is influenced on Syndicate though. Looks more like Rez to me.

Actually, I was dreaming about this kind of User Interface ever since I played the classic "Beneath Steel Sky" graphical adventure. In this game, the player enters a virtual reality system to perform certain file management functions (basically, find an encrypted file and decrypt it). The game designers created a beautiful and consistent interface just for the game sake and I always wanted to have a real file manager like this. There's a screenshot gallery here, with sample screenshot from the VR UI. In fact, the VR Dock looks almost like a real Dock from MacOS X, introduced many years later. I wonder if Jonathan Ive played this game...

Grab the Quake 2 demo from GamersHell, install it and replace ref_soft.dll with the AbSIRD one.

Malice was one of the titles used to show of the power of the XBox before it was released . If you paid attention to the XBox hype, chances are you saw some Malic screenshots.
It was widely expected to be a release title in fact. But here 3+ years latter, no release date ia availibe, the Official webpage no longer exists, and we've heard nothing from Argonaut Games in the last year or so.

Her: Honey, where shall I put this end table?

You: Oooh, right there, put it right there, tha's right...

I found that this classic works wonders.

Why? Because it's funny. My GF doesn't get my first person shooters, simulators or strategy games. But she like cartoons.

Everyone I've shown loves it, even though it does have chunky graphics for these days.

Go the tentacle!

I'd like to also recommend Dark Fall, an adventure game basically made by one guy. It's one seriously spooky game.

We were excited about game graphics for a long time now. Even Quake 2 was visually great with coloured lightning and stuff. Unreal was visually stunning, with large open spaces, cool level design, great-looking lakes and waterfalls, and stuff. Max Payne was amazing with photorealistic textures, models, etc. Basically every major game was visually stunning in some way. The level of hype about Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 is only moderately higher than usually and can be explained by both games being announced and shown quite a time before they are ready. The unique features of these two engines are basically facial animations and per-pixel lightning. Everything else is already used in games you can buy today. If we are to believe the scientists, there is a big drop in our perception of computer-generated humans as realistic right before complete realism. Supposedly, we don't like characters that look "almost right", like characters in Final Fintasy (the movie). If this is so, then there will always be demand for more realism, until we can simulate reality 100% and more. So don't expect games to ignore the eye-candy and return to "good old times" of fun and good gameplay.

BTW, the most visually stunning game currently in development is neither Doom 3, nor Half-Life 2. It is Stalker. It also has by far the most realistic levels in an FPS, dynamic weather system (really cool), and (supposedly) very large levels, great story, great AI, great gameplay. It also has the usual (now) things like rag-doll physics, advanced dynamic lightning and shadows, cool shader effects, etc. It is also the first game about Chernobyl. ;)

Worthplaying - Xb - 91%
Gamers Hell - PC - 86%
Ferrago - PS2 - 82%
Gamesradar - PS2 - 81%

"The Wachowski Brothers' vision for The Matrix is one that extends far beyond the theatrical trilogy, and the world they have created is so rich that we've chosen to tell inter-connected Matrix-related stories in multiple mediums," said Joel Silver, producer of the Matrix films. "Our goal in collaborating with Ubi Soft is to create a multiplayer online game that reflects the trilogy's highly stylized storytelling and innovative action, taking fans beyond the boundaries of the movie screen and into a 'persistent world' where they can fully explore the vast realm of the Matrix."

So it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Revolutions didn't bring closure. It wasn't meant to.

Whether tying video/on-line games to a movie series is really going to work, only time will tell.

From the latter article I reference above:

"The Wachowski Brothers' vision for The Matrix is one that extends far beyond the theatrical trilogy, and the world they have created is so rich that we've chosen to tell inter-connected Matrix-related stories in multiple mediums," said Joel Silver, producer of the Matrix films. "Our goal in collaborating with Ubi Soft is to create a multiplayer online game that reflects the trilogy's highly stylized storytelling and innovative action, taking fans beyond the boundaries of the movie screen and into a 'persistent world' where they can fully explore the vast realm of the Matrix."

Revolutions wasn't supposed to give you the answers to everything. In fact, at the same time that Reloaded came out, a video game called Enter The Matrix came out, which contains some information pretaining to the Oracle and the family (father, mother, child) you see at the beginning of Revolutions in the train station. You learn who the family is, and, more importantly, what deal the father made with the Mero (french dude) in Reloaded (yes, he's in Reloaded, being led away from the table when Nero, Morpheus, and Trinity approach the Mero in the Resturant in Reloaded). In Revolutions, you only learn of the father's side of the deal. You never learn what the Mero got in return.

I've seen the movie and was dissapointed that it didn't answer my questions and I would probably have to play Enter The Matrix and The Matrix Online in order to grasp some of the answers I was expecting. I'm not a game-playing person and don't necessarily want to play the games.

If you realize that Revolutions isn't going to answer your questions and just sit back and enjoy it, it is actually a good movie. The more I think about the movie (I saw it Wednesday morning), the more I realize that it wasn't nearly as disappointing as I first thought.

I just wish it answered more questions, and, therefore, didn't force me to play the video and on-line games to fully grasp everything.

I got the linux demo from gamer's hell at like 150k/s. Its a pretty fun game, except that every time I get killed and respawn, the mouse is all screwed up so the screen spins like mad. Also when I try to quit the game just hangs there and I have to manually kill it. I'll try it again in a week or so, hopefully those issues will be sorted out quickly.

GamersHell has a review of the N-Gage as well, but it's a pretty obvious shill. It reads like an advertisement, and they don't even review the gaming aspect of it, saying that it will be published in a forthcoming addition to the advert^H^H^H^H^H^Harticle.

From http://www.gamershell.com/news_BHalf-Life2BGold.sh tml

Which site to believe? Who the hell knows?

The LoTR "War of the Ring" RTS being put together by Liquid is looking very cool - screenshots here

For screenshots, check out this.

yes, but they made a small problem with it. the old style GBA is unplayable by *most*(meaning, those with bad eyesight apparantly, I can see the screen just fine) with out some sort of Mod.

Oops.

Import the game and get one of these to temporarily change the region of your gamecube so you can play whatever Japanese titles you want.

Um... there.

As an aside:

I see no reason why a company shouldn't have completely region-free software and let the market forces figure it out. Sure, they might want to only officially sell and support native language localised versions in each market, but it would give them the option of doing a worldwide release (assuming the console has a "language preference" in it's hardware setup - like the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube all do).

This would also be the easiest way to destroy the mod chip (and hack disks) market overnight - it would also allow enterprising consumers to import and play whatever they want straight out of the box.

A small concession to help avoid grey importers trying to dump import copies as an "official release" should be the game's packaging and splash screen clearly stating the territory the game was originally intended for. Eg: "North American version" / "European version" / "Japanese version" (in the native language) and that region's flag below the logo.

That's what I would do if I had the ability to make those kind of decisions.

Gamer's Hell of course also has their mirrors up: Download GTA!

Gamer's Hell of course also has their mirrors up: Download GTA!

Gamer's Hell has got mirrors up. Feel free to slashdot FileHell!

Its no MOHAA or RTCW, thats the point, its a SIM that masks as a FPS. Kinda like CS without the cheats. The GFX are extremely good, thou some maps are dull(real life...) It does need a high end card with AA, which the new Radeon will give.

Hopefully we start to see UT2K3 benchmarks in reviews, I'm tired of Q3A, I hope Doom replaces it for benchmarks.